


(and for a moment) you feel like you are made of gold stuff too

by thequeenofokay



Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post Episode: s02e03, featuring baked goods and beaches, post sleepover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 03:50:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18307598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequeenofokay/pseuds/thequeenofokay
Summary: ‘Is this part of the routine too?’ Ele asks, with a smile so he knows she’s joking. ‘You give girls a good breakfast, so they’ll forgive you when you never call?’He laughs hard enough that he nearly spills the coffee he was pouring. It briefly crosses Ele’s mind that people don’t usually find her as amusing as he does.‘So—you want me to call?’ he teases, and she realises she might have walked straight into that one.—Eleonora makes questionable decisions in the aftermath of her night at Edoardo's.





	(and for a moment) you feel like you are made of gold stuff too

**Author's Note:**

> \+ this is the perennial 'after the sleepover' fic except that its deeply indulgent and ele has like, 30% less self control because edoardo's singing has her braincells occupied.
> 
> \+ title and the little quote are from 'the mutterings of a laurel'

> _ the most beautiful types of people are the ones who are beautiful yet they do not know it. sometimes you catch these people and you fall in love and you hate them all at the same time. sometimes i think that the thing that makes them so beautiful is that they are shining on the inside and it comes out through the pores of their skin, like glimmery gold dust. _

 

Ele wakes to an odd creaking sounds and the feel of something cool against her cheek. After a moment, she realises it is the sound of leather on leather. At some point in the night she had taken the jacket off and moved under the covers instead.

She was hugging the jacket now too. Its probably best for her own sanity if she doesn’t unpick that too much.

She is alone in the bed, she realises, as she pushes herself upright. From the light coming through the curtains, its not early. In fact, she has a sneaking suspicion that she has slept in embarrassingly late. As a rule, Ele does not sleep in. She is a morning person by nature and, however much Filo complains that no one should be awake willingly before midday, it’s the way she likes it.

She has broken a lot of her own rules lately.

She takes a moment before she goes downstairs to wash her face in the bathroom. She can hear him moving around down the stairs. Her hand shakes a little as she turns the tap off, and she curses herself for feeling nervous about seeing him.

She takes a moment to breathe. So, woke up in Edoardo Incanti’s bed—this doesn’t have to be a big deal. She can just bid him a quick, respectable goodbye and leave. It’s not a big deal.

Just like those niggling, fluttering feelings she had around him last night are also _not a big deal_.

She smells something baking as she pads down the stairs. He’s washing out glasses from the night before when she arrives in the kitchen. Most of the villa has been tidied; he must have been awake for a while.

He stops and smiles when he hears her enter. Her insides somersault. It’s probably hunger.

‘How did you sleep?’ he asks.

She takes a moment to answer. She can’t exactly admit that the answer is _amazing_ —his bed is ridiculously comfortable. ‘Fine,’ she settles on.

He takes pastries from the oven, places one on a plate and hands it to her. ‘Coffee?’ he offers.

She nods, hopping up to sit on the counter like she had the night before. Her plan for a quick goodbye is already out of the window, apparently.

The pastry is buttery and delightful and melts in her mouth. She can’t help a tiny moan.

Edoardo’s eyebrows raise a little.

‘Did you make this?’ she asks before he can comment.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I had the dough prepared before.’

‘Is this part of the routine too?’ Ele asks, with a smile so he knows she’s joking. ‘You give girls a good breakfast, so they’ll forgive you when you never call?’

He laughs hard enough that he nearly spills the coffee he was pouring. It briefly crosses Ele’s mind that people don’t usually find her as amusing as he does.

‘So—you want me to call?’ he teases, and she realises she might have walked straight into that one.

‘Shut up,’ she mutters, taking the coffee and sipping to hide her blush. It’s not a no. The smile he flashes her says he knows it, too. ‘So, you bake, you sing, you play guitar. Is there anything the great Edoardo Incanti can’t do?’

He leans against the counter next to her, takes a drink from his own mug, and seems to consider this for a few moments. ‘No.’

‘You must have too much time on your hands.’ She points the remainder of her pastry at him accusingly. ‘You should study harder.’

‘I appreciate your concern for my studies.’

‘Anyway,’ she continues, ‘I only have my brother at home and I’m not—this.’ She gestures up and down him and then at their surroundings.

He looks at her curiously. She realises she has done it again—offered up personal details to him unprompted. ‘Your parents?’

‘My mother works at the university in Padua. She doesn’t come home much,’ Ele explains quickly. ‘Has Filo messaged at all this morning?’ she asks, before he can ask anything else.

‘No.’ He passes his phone across so she can see for herself. ‘You can let him know you survived the night, if you like.’

She rolls her eyes and then ruins the effect when she is unable to hold back a smile. ‘I don’t think he thought I was in mortal peril.’ She stares at the messages to Filo. It’s not like her brother will be awake anyway. ‘What should I tell him?’

‘Do you want me to drive you home?’ Edoardo asks.

The reminder that this comfortable thing she has had with him has to end stings. A thought enters her mind. The rational, sensible part of her brain that is supposed to catch it before she can say it out loud fails to kick in. ‘Take me back to Fiumicino,’ she says.

Edoardo pauses with his coffee halfway to his mouth. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Fiumicino,’ Ele repeats, before she loses her nerve. ‘I want you to take me there. Today.’

He blinks at her. There is something thrilling about being able to shock him. ‘But—why?’

‘We never really got to finish our date,’ she says, justifying it to herself as much as to him. ‘I thought it would be… nice.’

He breaks into one of those grins that could, completely objectively, power a city. ‘Okay.’

 

He offers up control of his Spotify account once they’re on their way. She settles on a playlist of innocuous pop songs. He taps his finger against the steering wheel in time to the beat.

She plays with the sleeve of the sweater she borrowed from him. She’s beginning to wonder if the discomfort of wearing her slept-in t-shirt and jumper from the night before would have been a better option that catching the soft look in his eyes when he saw her in his clothes.

Last time they made this journey she could bundle all of her nerves away under a feeling of righteous anger.

She no longer has that luxury.

This drive is not quiet like the last one, though. He comments on the traffic, the weather and anything else that takes his interest like this is a regular occurrence for them. She finds herself settling into it, and before she realises, they have arrived.

Last time, he had taken her to the marina. This time, after he has parked, he says, ‘I thought we could walk along the beachfront.’

It’s warm and sunny enough that she takes off the sweater as they walk. She forgets how tall he is sometimes, but she can tell he’s shortening his steps so she doesn’t have to jog to keep up with him.

‘You used to come here with your mother,’ she prompts. The words have so much more weight now that she knows that she’s gone.

He smiles. It’s soft and tender. She wishes she could see exactly what he is remembering right now. ‘She taught me to sail,’ he says.

‘Another skill that the great Edoardo Incanti possesses,’ Ele quips.

The corner of his mouth curves up in amusement as he continues. She’s glad. She wants this to be a happy moment. ‘It was usually just the two of us. My brother didn’t care, and my father was too busy.’

Ele makes a noise of understanding. Her mother hasn’t understood the concept of _family time_ in years. ‘That’s a shame,’ she says.

‘I didn’t mind,’ he says. ‘It was good to spend time with her.’

‘Did you still come here after she…?’

‘After she got ill?’ he finishes, voicing what she couldn’t bring herself to stay. ‘Yes. We couldn’t sail, so we would sit on the beach instead. I think it was…’ he trails off. He has the same look as he did the night before, when he had thanked her for apologising for the things she’d said. ‘I think it was good for her,’ he finishes.

He stops suddenly in front of a gelateria. ‘What would you like?’ he asks.

 

The peach gelato she chose makes her hands sticky. She licks her fingers. Her stomach swoops when she notices him watching her. It occurs to her that she could stop and wipe her hands on her jeans instead.

She doesn’t.

They are stood in the sand. She’ll be pouring it out of her boots for weeks. The tide is out. She walks towards the sea. She doesn’t look back to see if he is following; she knows he will.

‘Do you think it’s cold?’ she asks over her shoulder.

‘Yes,’ she hears him say. He sounds amused. ‘Of course it is.’

She marches forwards regardless, stopping where the sea meets the sand. She bends and dips her hand in.

‘Shit!’ She jumps back as the water laps at her boots. It’s freezing.

‘I told you.’ He’s caught up with her.

‘I see now why you didn’t bring me down to the beach last time,’ she says. ‘I’d have caught hypothermia.’

His eyebrows raise. ‘Only if you had tried to swim.’

‘I’m sorry we never got to finish that date,’ she says.

‘I’m not,’ he says. ‘I’ve preferred today.’

She nods. ‘It’s been…’ she begins. A breeze whips a strand of her hair into her eyes. He reaches up to brush it away.

She’s not entirely sure when they got this close.

‘Eleonora,’ he says. His fingers are still there, hovering on her jaw now. He almost kissed her twice last night, and she almost let him twice. She’s not sure if her resolve can stand against a third time. ‘Why are we here?’

Because when he played that song to her last night, she feels like she fell out of the real world and into this one where she can talk and flirt and be comfortable with him like it is the most natural thing there is. Because she has found that somewhere, without her noticing, she has started to like having him around. Because she doesn’t want it to end.

She doesn’t know how to say any of that.

‘You asked me if I liked it here,’ she says instead, barely more than a breath. ‘I do.’

He is looking at her with such reverence, like she put the stars in the sky. The rush it gives her is incomparable.

‘Can I—?' he murmurs.

She takes a breath. Nods.

He kisses her.

Every thought leaves her head. All she can hear is the sea and all she can feel is him and the warmth of the sun, setting her alight. He is sweet like the gelato, and slow but not soft. One of his hands is in her hair and the other is sliding across her back, pulling her close.

She wonders distantly how anyone survives this. Surely, she will never breathe again.

He pulls back. His eyes move across her face, his thumb caresses a circle against her cheek. He is open and vulnerable, just like when he sang to her.

In an instant, she feels like she has been hit with a wave of the cold sea water. The moment she has been living in since last night, stretching to breaking point, suddenly shatters. What is she doing?

She takes a step back, her hand coming to her mouth. ‘What am I doing?’ she whispers.

‘Ele?’ He reaches out, concerned, and she takes another step away, shaking her head.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I shouldn’t have—’

‘What’s wrong?’ His hand catches her shoulder.

‘I can’t hurt Silvia like this.’ She is a terrible friend. Silvia has barely entered her mind in the last day.

He stares at her for a moment, and then looks somewhere into the distance above her head. She wonders briefly if he is going to get angry or frustrated. A little, treacherous part of her hopes that he will, because then she can get angry back at him, and they can go back to the way things were. She will have an excuse to hate him, and none of this will matter.

He only nods. ‘I understand.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ he says. He looks back at her, finally. ‘I shouldn’t have messaged her again after a year. I didn’t realise it would make things more difficult for you. I’m sorry.’

She wants to take a moment to appreciate how much different his reaction might have been a year ago, but she can't think anything except _what have I done?_

‘Would you like me to take you home?’ he asks.

 

The drive back is quiet. She stares straight ahead out of the window, letting her thoughts spiral. Even a week ago, she would be setting out the lie they were going to tell about everything that has happened between them, but now she cannot find the energy for it.

She knows she can trust him, anyway.

He stops outside her house. She fumbles with the seatbelt as she tries to work out the proper way to say goodbye. She wants to just run out of the car and not look back.

‘Thank you for last night,’ she says. ‘And today, and for understanding… about Silvia.’

‘It’s nothing,’ he says, which is the stupidest thing she’s heard all day. She’s pretty sure she just broke his heart, and he’s just taking it like it’s no big deal.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I… goodbye.’

She doesn’t look back. She doesn’t stop until she has reached her bedroom.

She falls onto her bed and stares at the ceiling. She kissed Edoardo Incanti. She _likes_ Edoardo Incanti. There is no denying any of it. Fuck, this is a mess.

**Author's Note:**

> \+ i'm on tumblr @ joanbeauforts


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